Downtown Melbourne New Home For Ensemble

Ensemble Theatre of Florida, a resident professional theater company based in Brevard County, will open its new home in a renovated arcade in downtown Melbourne tonight.

A production of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie will launch the first full season of the theater group, which was formed 1 1/2 years ago. The group had to curtail its 1984-85 season after only two productions because of delays in the renovation of Rockledge High School's auditorium, where it had arranged to perform.

The new theater, a 3,000-square-foot space that once served as Melbourne's post office, is located in Le Gallerie Arcade (the former Brand Arcade) on Strawbridge Avenue, across from Melbourne City Hall.

Artistic director Stuart Smith said that the Ensemble chose downtown Melbourne over other Brevard County sites because of the revitalization that has been taking place in the city during the past several years.

''We wanted a place where people could park, walk and eat both before and after the show, instead of all this driving that people do,'' said Smith, who founded the company with his wife, actress Louise Goetz, after 15 years of performing for such companies as the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and Actors Theatre of St. Paul.

''We'll be part of something in downtown Melbourne that is much bigger than our own operation,'' he said.

The Ensemble has spent about $100,000 gutting and rebuilding the Strawbridge Avenue space, which most recently was occupied by a print shop. The new theater will seat 92 people in tiers of seats curving around an open performance area.

Money for the conversion has come from a fund-raising campaign that began in September and will continue until the end of the year.

The Ensemble is trying to raise $250,000, the majority of which will help support the company for the next three years, until it is able to rely more substantially on income from ticket sales. So far, Smith said, $120,000- $130,000 has been raised.

The group already has sold more season subscriptions than it anticipated. About 325 season tickets have been sold, and the group hopes to sell about 75 more. Smith is hoping for an average attendance of about 1,000 people for each production.

Many of the theater group's plans have changed substantially since the aborted first season, Smith said. Guest directors will direct four of the five 1986-87 productions, rather than Smith's doing much of the directing himself. Such renowned theater figures as Richard Fallon, founder of the Asolo State Theater in Sarasota, and George White, founder and president of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Conn., have agreed to direct during the coming season. Fallon will direct Gardner McKay's drama Sea Marks, to be presented March 11-April 5, and White will direct William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, scheduled for April 22-May 17.

Warren Magnuson, a former Broadway director based in Minneapolis, will direct the upcoming production of The Glass Menagerie, and Judith Edwards, a New York actress and producer, will direct Lee Blessing's Nice People Dancin' To Good Country Music, to be presented Jan. 28-Feb. 22. Smith will direct Alan Ayckbourn's comedy How the Other Half Loves, which will be presented June 3-28.

The Ensemble's company has shrunk from 18 people to 13, including five who did not act with the group last year. Some of those actors and a few others will make up the Ensemble's new children's theater group, which will present its first production, A Christmas Carol, in December. An improvisational comedy group, the Plain Brown Rappers, will be inactive until early next year, Smith said, largely because the Ensemble tried to do too much too soon.